buckling down

my thoughts for today
1. looking forward to the brand new computer my brother, the computer guru, bought for our family, costing only $300. it wasn't an easy decision to make, but considering that we rely so much on our one desktop computer and w/o it, well, we have no way of storing our family information, my conducting our household business, and having access to the internet is necessary, having just one functioning computer is a need. we waited until we had the cash in hand to pay it off in full, and coupling that with my desire to wait for a great deal paid off, and now we'll enjoy the fruits of that labor. my brother is going to install all the programs that we use-plus he'll hold onto it until we go to the bay area next month, so i don't have to pay shipping. he's going to look for an external hard drive for us, if not w/ him, then slickdeals will probably have something as the back to school sales ramp up. there's not much that we'll have to transfer over, but getting the external hard drive beforehand would definitely save time, plus back up those precious family pictures. we'll see what happens-my patience is getting better.

2. after eating out last night with the boys, we ate home today. made pizza burgers and sauteed veggies for dinner. loved how they turned out.

3. we made it a whole week w/o hitting up costco. the only things we need is milk and salad. i'll be getting a weeks worth of veggies/fruit for $8 or less from the veggie stand in town. i can't wait to see what's there, yummy :-)

4. resisted spending money at target last night and this morning. yay! i'm sure i'll be tempted more once the summer stuff is clearanced to 50% or more, in a week or so. they're ramping up for back to school-that means markdowns are on the horizon.

5. i know we use our amex to build up our rebate every month-and every month we're reducing how much we spend-even though gas has gone up, our total oop expense on the card has gone down. yay!!! lets just hope that we keep it up-i think we can, and i'm determined to reduce it a couple hundred less w/ each passing month. w/ all the cheap veggies, choosing free and inexpensive outings, and healthy eating we're doing, i definitely see that happening! that'll make paying for the mold work that much easier to swallow. once that's situated, we'll resume work on the one outstanding credit card-then full throttle on paying off the van ahead of schedule.

6. i love thinking ahead :-)